The invention relates to information gathering systems and methods, in particular to systems and methods for storing information found on Internet web pages.
When searching for information on the net, a researcher often finds a number of pages with relevant information. However these pages are of various relevancy to the search and often only of partial interest to the searcher.
When relevant information is found, the source or the download link or URL of this information is noted for reference and later retrieval. Current methods for noting the source includes manually or using a browsers bookmark system, saving each page to a local storage medium, or copying information to other document editors.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 6,067,565 to Horyitz describes a system that downloads an entire webpage or selected data types therein, in the background. Such system however does not enable selection, storage or organization of a user selected snippet of an already displayed web page.
While each known system has its advantages, each also has disadvantages. These methods can be time consuming, untidy, lacking a way to keep records about the content, distracting from the main purpose of the information retrieval and inadequate for sharing with more than one person.
Furthermore, where people are involved in a group project, the above approaches do not lend themselves to automatically generating a common shared resource.
What is needed therefore is a method of storing the portions of displayed web pages (i.e., snippets) that are of particular interest to the user. Further, what is need is a system and method of categorizing and organizing these snippets.